Adventures in Nail Polish and a Little Bit of Beauty

My Julep Collection

This is a longer post, so if you only want to see the collection and are not interested in the story about why I have so much polish, scroll down for pictures.

What Got Me Started
aka Why Julep Felicia is the Reason I Have Every Polish

Once I had discovered Julep and really started to enjoy the polish, I went through the site and wrote down a list of colors I wanted- perhaps 20-30 colors, trying to get a wide range and variety. This included Felicia, which is a “Black speckled mint crème” polish that I believe was only available once, and is pretty HTF. I really loved the color, and wanted to find it. It was part of a trio of speckled polishes for spring including Emerson, a light blue, and Kimberly, a lavender/purple. For some reason Felicia is much harder to find than the other two.

Through some post holiday sales and deals on ebay, I crossed every polish off the list except for Felica, which I could not find. This led to me revisiting the site and also discovering the Aria Evan’s site (see my for collectors page for more info about this), which lists every polish. From that I created a new list, and ended up finding everything on it, except for – you guessed it – Felicia. This happened a few times. By that point I was in a swap group on facebook and had bought some big lots of polish on eBay, because when you can get it for a dollar or two a bottle, why not?

Felicia stayed on the wish list, and by the time I eventually found it, I realized I had accumulated over 300 bottles. This didn’t include the ones I had received in lots and didn’t love, so was planning to resell. I found my first Felicia in a swap group on Facebook, used, and only about 1/3 full, but I was still quite excited to have it. I did later find a full bottle.

I should say right now that I’m not new to collecting things that come in colors. It’s always been oddly appealing to me. Previous to starting this collection, I had collected every unique shade of Crayola crayon (although not every name, as many have been relabeled for special sets), and every color sharpie has released as well.

Between my collection and destash, I had well over half the Julep polishes available, so I kind of figured, why not? There’s something very satisfying about being able to complete your collection. Through swap groups, some very kind bloggers I contacted, eBay, and other online stores, I eventually collected most of the colors. The list slowly shrank as I searched for really HTF colors that were only available in 2011 when Julep started or just through early 2012.

As luck would have it, a Maven Meetup (an event where you can meet Jane and socialize with other mavens, and usually see the new collection early) was held in my area, and I was able to go and show Jane my collection. I mentioned to her that Johnny was the only unique color missing, and a few weeks later, a Johnny arrived in the mail from her. I cannot thank her enough for this! By unique color, I mean that some colors have been re-released, Back from the Vault, Julep calls it, and a few others were renamed. I felt that to have a complete collection, I needed originals and re-releases of any color, as well as one of every name.

I was able to track down the last few stragglers at the end of 2015, and although there are a few bottles I’m still tracking down, I do consider the collection to be complete.

The Collection
aka The Monstrosity, Which I Mean in the Most Loving Way

As of the end of 2015, the collection stands at 701 unique colors I believe, plus re-releases and renamed colors. I don’t have an exact bottle count, but my guess is that it’s about 730 bottles. I will continue to collect them, but since there were about 160 colors last year, I’m not sure how long this will be sustainable. Only time will tell.

All of the pictures are of the collection through September 2015, so they are missing the Oct, Nov, Dec, and Holiday Collections. Hopefully I will take an updated picture at some point, but you get the idea.

Because it was a good idea to just throw them all in a pile and then try to to organize them

The Complete Collection in September 2015

They’re arranged in color order. At then end are special top coats (glow in the dark, crackles, etc.) and glitter topcoats, followed by normal base coats and top coats.

Swatch Sticks, Labeled and Organized

Every color I have is swatched, so I do my best to provide color comparisons whenever I can. I will try to feature them in my collection reviews and will provide requested comparisons as much as possible.

Still on the Wishlist

While I do now have every polish I need to consider my collection complete, there are a few things I’d still really love to find. If you can help me out or know someone who might be able to, please let me know. I’m open to buying and swapping.

Julep Erica with a Label (came in a mystery box, most were unlabeled, but some did have a label. I hope to find one)

Original Johnny in a square bottle (not sure if this exists or not; Julep says it was never in a square bottle, but there is one blogger with pics of it, so that’s always been a bit of a mystery)

Other Colors Missing Labels: Original Alicia, Selena

Hopefully I haven’t bored you too much with this post. I’ll start getting into polish reviews and swatches soon. If you’ve read this far, thanks for bearing with me.